Jonathan Whitton looks and speaks with a youthful, artless enthusiasm, but as the old song says, "You'd Be Surprised." He sings with understanding and maturity, examining, as he promises, "the fine line between beauty and anguish." Pretty ambitious order, although "beauty and anguish" are somewhat tailor-made for a cabaret act. Whitton, however, gives you a lot more. From his first song, "Watching the Show" (Ross/Keenan), you lean in and listen. Whitten is a storyteller-plus. The "plus" being his flexible tenor voice, sturdy, confident, and well trained. He has an agenda and he delivers.

Whitton's song list at The Laurie Beechman Theatre comes from contemporary songwriters, with a couple of old timers like Stephen Sondheim with "Good Thing Going"/"Not a Day Goes By" and Carole King's "It's Too Late." He delivers his selections with compelling forcefulness, moving from optimistic and naivety, to frustration, to bitterness, those places we have all visited. His selections include that Monet of theatre songs, "Lazy Afternoon" (Latouche/Moross), where he never loses focus on the impressionistic shadings. He relishes the bite in Sondheim's "Know Things Now" and mines the despair of living in this "Wicked Little Town" (Trask/Mitchell). He displays the span of a relationship in "Sweet Dreams" (Bucchino).

Songs From an Unmade Bed features lyrics by Mark Campbell with music by various composers, mostly reminiscences of love, lust, and loss. From this show, Whitten chooses his title song, the discovery of a lusty affair with "Perfect Finite" and the wry worrisome of "He Never Did That Before" -- "…that's too advanced for Akron / Unless he met some Brazilian there."

In a series of love and loss songs, Whitton chooses to stand still, hands at his side, letting the voice interpret the song, although he brings in some body language with Jason Robert Brown's "I Can Do Better Than That."

His patter is disarming and sharp, and his accompanist, Tamra Stephenson plays a robust piano supporting the strength of his songs. Delivering his finite agenda, Jonathan Whitton is a performer to watch and appreciate.

Jonathan Whitton appears at The Laurie Beechman Theatre August 3, 12, 17, and 31

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
August 3, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org